Into the wormhole
by LadyRavenwing
Summary: "How did I get myself into this? I probably shouldn t have stolen" - Life takes a turn for the crazy when stuck-in-her-rut twenty something Emily encounters some strange folks on her way home one crazy winter night that turn out to be from a galaxy not too far away. OC / Star Wars movieverse set somewhen between episodes II and III.
1. Snow and other craziness

_Author´s note: I have never written a fanfic like this before, as in a fanfic which tosses a character from our world into a fictional world. It´s the kind of stuff you either like or don´t like which is why I would ask those that don´t like it simply not to bother with it. A few things about this however are important to me and the foremost of this is that I do not intend my OC as a kind of Mary Sue that swoops in and is capable of everything and anything, is related to everyone important and one handedly saves the galaxy. Quite the contrary. This is supposed to be a realistic as it gets take on a what-if scenario (as far as realism can be used as a term here) of a flawed character falling headfirst into the rabbithole and struggling with all kinds of things. It´s an attempt at a fic which will hopefully have both dramatic and tragic as well as light hearted and humorous moments. For those that are in for that kind of ride, sit back, read and enjoy._

 **Chapter 1**

 **Snow and other craziness**

How did I get myself into this? I probably shouldn´t have stolen. That´s how it all started.

But how should I have known It all began like an ordinary day. One of those days, in fact, that I started to wish was less ordinary even before I had gotten half way through it but which then took several nasty twists that made me wish back for ordinary with the heat of a thousand suns.

It was still relatively early morning and there had been only a handful of customers in the bookshop so far. I was following my own thoughts while sorting through the newest stacks of books that had been delivered earlier while my boss, Franklin, was creeping his way around the store on tippy toes that I would later learn were his way of trying to work up his courage to having that talk with me. That talk that started with "Look, Emily, we need to talk" and that gave me the by now familiar nervous flick in the stomach. I knew "Traditional Tomes" wasn´t doing great, hadn´t for a while, probably even before Franklin hired me. Good old Franklin with his feeble glasses and slightly out of style sweater vest that, despite dwindling customers and the increasing competition of online stores and big chains downtown had shown a big heart in hiring a recently-out-of job late 20-something with a college degree in an entirely different field, because he believed in her passion for books and in helping a fellow human being through a rough stretch in her life. He had probably known then already that it would be hard to pay my salary.

I followed him into his messy little corner office which had neat stacks of freshly pursued rare first editions along the walls that I knew Franklin couldn´t afford but that he just hadn´t been able to say no to, book lover that he was. "It´s not all about the bestsellers, you know" he would tell me that one time I carefuly wondered whether he could afford to invest in antiques. "It´s about books with a heart for people that appreciate them. The big chains just don´t have that kind of heart any more and that´s why we are here to stay." And while I agreed with him I also knew that bills needed to be paid. His and mine. And so my admiration for a fellow book lover was often overlayered by the urge of shaking the man to get a little ounce of sense into him.

He closed the office door behind him. As if to stop people from eavesdropping. As if to show me he took privacy seriously. In reality there hadn´t been more than three customers all morning so the chances of anyone eavesdropping trended towards zero. "Look, Emily", he said then, "We need to talk."

In this moment, I was scared he´d let me go. It wasn´t as bad though. The only little spark of light on what would turn out to be a truly a weird, crazy day. "I won´t be able to pay you a Christmas bonus. In fact…" he took off his glasses and started to clean them with a meticulously folded napkin, after meticulously unfolding it. "This December I will only be able to pay you half…"

I opened my mouth, not sure what I´d say. I should be concerned, should be mad in fact because Franklin didn´t have his wits together enough to inform me of that until now, but what would that help? Instead I closed my mouth again and he took it as a proof that he had made me speechless and that his probably often rehearsed version of this conversation was running one of the two dozen ways he had anticipated. "I really am sorry and I know it´s tough for you too, I….I just don´t want to let you go. You´re an assett. If you can make it through December and bear with me then… I´m sure things will look up once I get the redecorations done and we finished working out the promotion to set us apart form the chains. I…"

I sighed. I felt sorry for the guy, as much as I felt sorry for myself. "I like working for you." I said. "Really I…it´s okay."

 _No, Emily,_ my inner voice rejected what I had just said. _No, it´s not okay. Rent doesn´t pay itself. You were planning t go home for Christmas and still haven´t paid for the plane ticket plus… it looks like once more your travel money box is going to take a backseat on the one for groceries._

Franklin sighed, finished wiping his glasses and put the napkin away, now able to look me in the eye again, now that I had not yelled at him. Not that I ever would. But Franklin was one of those slightly fearful people that always seemed to expect being snapped at. "Good… I mean…not good. You know what I mean. It´s not okay, Emily, but it´s all I can say for now."

Maybe it was time to redouble my efforts to look for a job closer to the centre again. Or to finally go international. With my degree I very well could. When had I given up on that anyways? That additional thought only added to that moment being a real downer. I mean, was I really planning on staying a book store´s assistant for the rest of my life? Or, worst case scenario, to become its owner sooner rather than later and inherit a bunch of debt on top of my student loans? I suppressed a sigh. "Don´t stress yourself about it." I said with a weak smile that I knew didn´t look like I meant it. "Really, I´ll be fine…if it´s just for this month it´s gonna be okay."

Franklin had been watching me, almost jittery, then pushed himself away from the desk he had been leaning against. "I know it´s bad." he said. "and as I said there is nothing I can do, really."

What happened next is nothing I am proud of and something I would soon regret. Something, it seems while I write this, without which none of what happened later, would have happened. I kept working for another two hour and I must admit now that, mulling over in my mind and coming to the conclusion that I wouldn´t be able to pay both my rent and the plane ticket, I must have come up with the plan to steal from my perfectly nice and good hearted boss even before he left for his obligatory coffee break at 1 pm sharp. I must have been set on my plan already by then because as soon as Franklin vanished around the corner, I made my way back into his office.

Let me say this one thing: I have never stolen anything. And I still don´t know why that changed this moment. I just know I did. And that I still feel bad about it, but for more reasons than the obvious.

The office was eerily quiet as I stepped in, listened once more and only when I was sure there was nobody just suddenly entering the store, I stepped around the desk to open the topmost drawer. I must have been looking for something valuable. Not money, not something so obvious, because deep down I knew I was doing something wrong and was hoping I would find the one perfect item that was both valuable and not important to Franklin at all. There were just papers in the top drawer. Letters, unopened bills…seems like Franklin was just as good at evading reality as I am at times. The middle drawer was empty apart from an old address book, the lower was far more interesting. I remember clearly how I rummaged through what seemed like an assortment of trinkets. A watch, some jewellery, some cash…and finally how I decided for the one thing that looked the least valuable and the least suspicious. Something like a flat , palm sized thing,no obvious markings or lines or ways to open it. Something like a flat silver box. I guessed it might be one of those old cigarette boxes. And I figured, feeling like the worst person in the world when I pocketed it, that if it was indeed silver, it might fetch some money to get me through the month.

The rest of the day was torture, because Franklin never suspected anything. He would never have thought of me as a thief and dearly hoped he´d never find out. While I was busy and my mind was still tormenting me about what I had done, I had my thoughts firmly set on what I´d do. Try to sell the thing at some pawn shop and get it back if I could. Maybe he would never even notice it was missing.

As the day progressed, even the weather took a turn for the worst. Some people might like a white Christmas but in this part of the country it´s more the question of whether we get a survivable version of Narnia or the merciless climates of planet Hoth.I like to use that line in random conversations. It usually gets a good laugh because hey, having some pop culture knowledge makes you interesting and fun these days.

In the course of the afternoon the snowfall that had started the night before was slowly turning into something really nasty. Thick flakes one moment, almost sleet the next. If that mix froze over, getting home would be a mess.

"Get out of here." Franklin told me around four, when it was already starting to get dark. "See that you get home before it gets worse." Home was about 20 minutes from the store usually, a little further away from the centre into a safe but not too expensive neighbourhood that had a number of middle class families that couldn´t quite afford the really fancy places and university students sharing apartments. In other words, it was a world of what-I-no-longer-am and what-I-not-yet-am without me even being sure I ever want to take a turn for the latter.

His words released a tension I hadn´t known was dreading fear that Franklin would walk to his office and figure out I had stolen from him. But he never did. And so, feeling my consciousness twist my guts once more and with the whatever it was heavy in my pocket I said thanks and goodbye, got into my beat up little chevy and made it out of the city faster than I had thought would be possible in this weather. Until I reached the Interstate that was. Cars lining up and nothing moving I stood for about a half hour before deciding for a u turn to try a detour. It would be a good way to get to a pawn shop that was far away from the one near the book store, too. I would be able to cash in the thing and I wanted to be rid of it as soon as possible, that dirty reminder of what a bad person I was. But maybe this day and weather had been a bad idea for a detour.

It was getting dark already and the further I advanced on that small, pretty much snowed in country road that my navigator insisted was a good alternative route, the more anxious I got. The snow let up after a while, appearing only as some thin flakes in the headlights, the kind that, in combination with darkness, threatens to make you drowsy behind the wheel. I turned up the music in order not to fall asleep, but every radio station seemed to have trouble, delivering an annoying mix of sound, music and static on every channel so that soon I switched it off and was left alone in the silent winter chaos with only the engine sound of my car and the muffled crunching sounds my wheels made rumbling over a thicker and thicker blanket of snown.

I don´t know when I first knew I was being followed. Despite the road being pretty lonely and giving me an increasingly bad feeling about its twists and turns and lack of a snowplough, there was, first of all, nothing too unusual about a pair of headlights in the rearview mirror – quite the contrary: the fact that there was another vehicle around meant that if something happened and my car tried to die on me I would be saved – hopefully by a nice person and not an axe murderer – instead of having to freeze solid out here. But there was something that was just strange about it. Maybe it was because the headlights, as soon as I had gotten used to them, vanished, only for me to notice a little later, only to reappear again, moving closer with a speed that was worrying in this weather. Whoever the driver was, was confident at best and drunk at worst and while I knew it would be best to drive to the side and let him pass, there was something inside me that kept me from doing just that. Something that told me: _run!_

Still, the other car kept a steady distance for another while, lulling me into the fake safety of its driver just being another person desperate to make it home. However when we left the last lights of the city behind us, he sped up. In retrospect I am telling myself that I could hear the engines roar up when he did, intent on what I now know was ramming my car with the intent to send it off into the nearest ditch, making me stop. But I really am not sure. I just know that it scared me enough to hit the gas pedal and ascelerate in a way that was both risky and stupid. The next bend almost send my Chevvy off the road, making it sway and me panickingly grasp for the steering wheel, just in time managing to keep the vehicle from spinning and to my relief it seemed that my crazy stalker was falling behind. Only for a moment, then the other car moved faster again, speeding up, making me curse under my breath, at a total loss of what to do.

I have little recall of how long this insane little race took. It seemed to more fit into an action movie – a low budget one at that. I just know that eventually I could see the other car sway and turn behind me and that I could see in the backmirror that the driver had overestimated himself in another turn of the road. The car had veered sideways and the hectic swaying and howling of wheels told me even over the sound of my own panicky heartbeat that I might be safe for now. Nonetheless I kept a slightly more than safe speed, tapping my controls for the cell phone´s loudspeaker. I would call the cops. Both to get that asshole into trouble for chasing me like that and well, because no matter how crazy that guy might be, there was a fair chance that getting stuck in this snow could lead to bigger problems than a nasty hangover.

I must have been distracted for maybe a split second, looking down at the controls, a moment before I punched the number, but that was enough. What I did next was on pure instinct. The same moment I saw a movement caught in my headlights, I slammed the break and my car spun around its own axis once, coming to a halt what must have been inches from what had just jumped in my way. At first, in that initial instinctive reaction, I had thought it must have been an animal. A deer, maybe a coyote. But when my car came to a jittering yet sudden halt and I gave a grunt of pain at the jolt and looked up… I discovered it was a man.

I instantly panicked. Somehow, even though it didn´t make any sense, I thought it must be the crazy person that had been following me, even though he was somewhere a mile behind me on the road trying to get out of a ditch. At the same time what alarmed me was the guy´s clothes. It was bleeping cold out and this fellow was wearing what looked like a beige tunic girdled in the middle, pants of the same make (both of which had made him hellishly hard to see in the surrounding snow) and, the only thing that did stand out colourwise, brown, almost knee high boots, a brown belt and a wide brown robe. The thing was wide and he must have been holding on to it but had let go of it in an attempt to avoid me crashing into him, the hood had flown back off his head, revealing part of his face. He was holding up a hand, but whether in an attempt to stop my car with sheer will power or because the lights were blinding him was hard to say. His raised arm had caused the belt to be more visible… as well as the metal thing that was clipped to it. I must admit the thing did look extremely realistic, or should I rather say well made since „realistic" is not really an apt word with regards to things that don´t exist.

In short: What I had nearly run over with my little car on the escape from some crazy drunk chasing me was a grown man wearing jedi robes and a lightsaber. Apparently, one crazy person had not been enough on my way home.

I was about to find out that I couldn´t have been more wrong.


	2. Knight in not so shining armour

**Chapter 2 – Knight in not so shining armour**

"This really isn´t happening" I cursed under my breath, my heart still hammering with adrenaline. The figure in the headlights had not moved and deciding against better judgement, I hit the button to roll down the passenger side front window – only after I had firmly jammed on the one that locked me into my car safely. One never knows, after all but for some reason it seemed important to me that moment that over the beginning snowstorm, the stranger probably hadn´t heard the distrustful click. Why would that even matter? I had half a mind to yell at him for just jumping in my way – and maybe, on top of everything, for looking the way he did – but what I did was lean over as far as my seatbelt would allow, bow a little lower so I could catch a glimpse of his face and shouted. "Hey there, are you okay?" _What the hell were you thinking,_ I added. In thought.

He lowered his hand again and tossed a glance through my front window before hurrying over to the passenger side with an agility that was rather impressive on the snowy road. I pulled back instinctively, thanking my genius of slamming the locks seconds earlier. "Please, you need to get out of your transport."

I am not sure what I noticed first – in retrospect it is always difficult to say: Was it his accent, crisp and at the same time foreign, words spoken in a kind voice that wouldn´t quite fit some strange guy wandering round the cold in inappropriate clothes? The urgency in his words despite everything? The strange term he used for my car? Or was it more details of his appearance? It was difficult to guess his age, but by my estimate in this moment he had to be around his mid thirties. He had shortish hair somewhat of a shade between a dark blond and reddish brown and a well trimmed beard to match it. I had to admit, despite my bewilderment over his request, that I thought he looked impressive in a way.

"What?" I snapped, not even sure what held me back from trying to align said ´transport´ with the road again and hit the gas pedal right through the floor. "Why´d you just jump on the road like that? Are you..?"

He didn´t try the door but his eyes moved to look above it and into the distance, then seemed to survey our surroundings for a moment. "I know this sounds strange to you, but I am here to help you. You need to…"

"Listen… whatever convention you ran away from: this is the real world. I don´t even know who are so get away from…"

The rest of whatever immature or panicky triade I was about to fling at him was stopped short by a sound that I am pretty sure all of us somehow instinctively understand as a sure sign for shit just having hit the fan: A gunshot. I think I screamed. Or yelped. Probably yelped. Something undignified contradicting my firm stance with this weird stranger who, by the way he ducked next to my car, clearly indicated that he had not been the shooter. "As I understand these run on fossil fuels so you should get out of there before…" His voice carried over the winter winds. Another gunshot. _What the hell?_ I ducked instinctively, hearing the sudden skidding bang of the bullet bouncing off the top frame just above my driver´s side window. "…he hits to explode the tank." the stranger continued outside.

I was frozen in fear, in panic. Was this the same asshole that had tried to push me off the road earlier? _What the hell is happening here?_ I yelled just that, unclasping my seat belt with trembling fingers. Not intending to follow the stranger´s suggestion but just because the reptile part of my brain told me that lying low might give me a chance…I was fumbling for my phone but my fingers were too shaky to dial and I cursed under my breath "Shit, shit, shit!"

"You need to get out of there!" His voice was urgent now and, taking an insane, silly silly as I thought at that point, leap of faith that was sponsored by a third bullet crashing through the side of the windshield and shattering it into a biting, menacing rain of glass, I clasped my phone with one hand, opened the passenger door with the other. Nothing but instinct, understanding that what ever maniac was shooting at my car was on the other side and getting out of the car would at least put the chevvy between me and him.

I had no time to theorise. Before I could even scramble out of my car, the stranger who had covered next to it in his attempts to save me, grabbed me by the scruff of my winter coat´s neck. "I apologise." I heard him say over the storm as he dragged me out into the snow. Following my instincts once more, I grabbed for my rucksack that had been on the other seat. No split second too early, because Mr Cosplay had dragged me out into the winter night and in the next moment I felt a firm, decisive hand around my waist as he pushed my head low, making me a smaller target as I would only understand later, shoving me step by hurried step away form my car, gently yet firmly ignoring my protest. "Let go of me. What…?" I didn´t know whether to be paralised in fear over being shot at or terrified over being dragged out into the snow by a stranger.

"Let´s get out of here first." Another push, another shove. It can´t have been more than three, four seconds between him dragging me from my car and him jumping, me being dragged to a small mound of snow at the side of the road that, much to our luck, turned out extremely slippery. I felt how I lost ground under my feet on the side of the screamed as I started sliding down into what felt like nothing and everything happened at the same time.

Another gunshot.

A big bang.

Hot, searing, bright heat.

The dull pain of hitting snowy, soddy ground and tasting mud. "Urgh!"

The stranger who, as was beginning to sink in, had just saved me from being roasted in my own car, didn´t hesitate and dragged me back on my feet. "You need to run!"

This time, I ran.

What came next is a blur and probably my mind´s attempt of trying to make me forget a little bit. About the miserable feeling of my lungs starting to first hurt and then outright feel aflame in the cold winter air as I kept running, about how many times I stumbled and he caught me, about the little bruises I would later find that crazy escape through the night with a stranger rewarded me with: one above my right eye that I guess was from the shattered windshield, a bruised hand from an unpleasant fall scraping along some underbrush and some more I wouldn´t find until quite some later. It would have been seconds. It could have been minutes. It could have been longer. Now and then I seemed to remember that doing what I was doing might be dangerous itself and that is when I would try to struggle or try to pant that we needed to just call the cops. But all of that blurred. In the end, I thought I´d just break down. What kept me from doing that, was the menacing feeling of being followed.

Then it all ended. When I was pretty ready to protest that no matter what I just couldn´t run any more and when I had the feeling that my vision was starting to swim from exhaustion, we arrived at what I somehow believed had to be a car. "We will shake them off soon, I promise. Don´t be scared." I felt myself lifted, raised my hand and clasped them around metal, then found myself pushed and heaved into some sort of vehicle with a solid seat. I was panting heavily, thudding my head against the headrest of the seat in front of me in an attempt to draw in air that didn´t feel like daggers. A car, all right. Then I looked up, saw the stranger leap into his seat, swiftly work a few controls that made something above us, a shield, a cockpit, slide over us and into place. And realized: _This was no car._

As I smacked my hands against the glass dome in disbelief, probably alongside some pretty colourful curse, I saw them come over a ridge outside, heading right for us: two dark figures, shadows against the patches of snow and soot and I saw the weapon one of them held with ridiculous clarity.

"Hold on tight." There was, ridiculously, almost something like amusement in my rescuer´s voice. The thing I know is that I felt myself being lurched forward with incredible speed, then the world jumped, tilted and flipped by about 90 degrees, dark treetops jumping into view with snow reflecting off them as a volley of sharply red fire blasts skimmed past the hull of the thing we were sitting in. The thing the man in front of me was piloting.

The good thing of having felt guilty all day about stealing? At least that meant I hadn´t eaten which was the only thing that kept my stomach from turning itself inside out as the starfighter leaped into the air.


	3. Spirited away

**Chapter 3 – Spirited away**

Just like our crazy chase through the wet snow and just like that surreal on and off car chase before it, the intercepter´s ascent into the cloudy night sky was another of those moments of undefined duration – at the same time so blurred and so intense with regards to what I felt both physically and emotionally, that even in hindsight, trying to pick everything apart feels like trying to jumble through a chaotic box: pretty much impossible. Speaking of reactions though, I think what came before everything else was the overwhelming feeling of travel sickness. I had never much minded flying, never known a fear of it, but that damn thing was so fast, rising so quickly that in addition to my general exhaustion, hurting lungs and the blurr of snowflakes smacking against its windows from outside making orientation even harder, I just felt dreadful. I guess I clasped my hands around some overhead handle in a probably hilarious reinactment of my mother riding as a passenger in my car briefly after I had gotten my license and I breathed heavily in an attempt not to throw up. After all I neither had a puke bag nor would it have been very polite, because the thing had just two seats and I was in the back. These were my first thoughts, before everything else set in.

Once I had calmed my guts, which might have been because the thing had leveled a little and already pierced through the clouds, my mind started working somewhat more properly again. My grip still tight around the handle I tried to gather my thoughts, staring at the reddish blond head of hair in front of me that was now adorned with some kind of pilot gear the make of which I had never seen before. _All right,_ I thought, _if I approach this from a rational point of view (which I have never been good at) what are the odds?_ I quickly came to the conclusion that the likeliest explanation was that I was in fact in some ditch out there in the snow storm. That asshole who had followed me earlier, probably drunk, had like pushed me off the road for real, then hit the gas and I was out cold hallucinating. Nothing of what had happened after, I tried to make myself believe, was real. No stranger who was wearing the most remarkably realistic jedi outfit I had ever seen had jumped in front of my car and saved me, no explosion had happened, and I was certainly not sitting in some kind of spacecraft that, while I decided on this story, was rising higher once more at an alarming velocity. Of course that story meant I was bonkers and in danger of freezing to death while my mind was running off with some wild Star Wars fantasy, but that at least made sense to my reality.

"I am sorry, I really do sympathise not being too fond of flying."

His voice sounded a little concerned. "This must all seem very strange to you, but I assure you it was the only way to assure your safety."

Damnit, in all this craziness, the guy managed to sound perfectly polished without making is sound weird.

"Safety?" Such a detailed, witty response but more than what I would have been capable of moments ago when my stomach was still doing nasty summersaults.

"I will explain once we can be sure we got them off our tails. Please, trust me for the moment."

He was working a few controls in the front and I felt physically stable enough to lean forward and peek over the back of his seat to get a better idea of the cockpit. _Well_ , I thought, _I might be bonkers, but my subconsciousness was definitely creative and excellent at making things look realistic. And that without me even having seen the insides of a spacecraft up close._ Maybe it was initially the shock, my mind still working through the fact that, stranger or no, weird clothing fetish or no, this guy had just saved my life, but for now I decided that the best road not to start screaming hysterically and in panic was to accept reality as it presented itself. It felt like something that wouldn´t work for long, but for now it was a somewhat safe retreat.

"Who was that?" I asked, no question who I was refering to. Instead of asking his name, this seemed my bigger concern. "The kind not to be messed with. I have an idea why they were following you. It´s the same reason…" Another push of speed catapulted the interceptor higher and pressed me back into the seat again with an undignified grunt. "…why we have to get out of this system. For now."

"Huh?" Utter confusion.

"Don´t worry, we…oh, blast."

It seemed like that safe little retreat in the niche of my mind had a half time of a mere few seconds. Because in that moment, we were through…not the clouds. The atmosphere. Plunged into space and its blackness and, in an attempt to adjust I made the mistake of craning my head to orient myself….finding a dark wide convex shape behind us, freckled with a few clusters of lights, not comprehending for a second that what I was seeing was us speeding away from the only planet I had ever known.

His remark however made sence an instant later.

"Sorry." He called out and before I could ask what for, the craft dipped and rolled over to the side, as it turned out narrowly escaping another, much longer, volley of sharp red lightbolts. I desperately shut my eyes, unable to take any more of these stunts, my mind reeling with the nagging truth that no hallucination made you sick like this and in no hallucination did danger feel this real, or did bruised palms sting this realistically.

I didn´t catch much of the ensuing fight. My robed pilot did some adventurous twists and turns but, I believe, did not fire back much, the globe now under us like some vast, mostly dark marble Meanwhile, the other ship seemed to have endless supplies.

"Who the hell…"

In that moment there was a deafening visual sensation, a fireball, strangely soundlessly, erupting on my side of the craft, reducing the other ship to tiny pieces of junk that started to drift away into all directions, into space, into the atmosphere. Funny how in that moment I had to think of shooting stars. That thing would cause shooting stars. I liked shooting stars.

Right after that explosion, something zipped by. I instantly ducked, expecting more enemy fire, but the other thing, another interceptor as I saw a moment later when it alligned with us, had no intention to blast us out of space.

The transmission was crisp and clear, no static. A male voice. "I will add that one to my list, master."

A chuckle from my pilot in reply. "Thank you."

I felt my eyebrows raise in the way people who know me is a mix of slightly annoyed scepticism and amusement. _Master_?

I leant my head back against the back of my seat, deciding that if I was going crazy, I might as well roll with it. "So…" I said defeatedly, sounding flat. "I´m Emily. I guess I owe you some thanks for saving my butt."

He turned over his shoulder a little, making me realise his eyes were a deep blue. The similarity was remarkable. "I´m Obi Wan Kenobi." he said with a not as if introducing himself with the most normal name in the world.

 _Oh, but of course… Save me a spot at the loony bin._

"Riiight.." I might have said that out loud, judging his slight, somewhat confused frown before his attention was drawn back to the other spaceship´s pilot who was contacting again. The one who had called him master … _Nope, don´t go there, Em._

"I think they were alone. I don´t sense any other."

"Neither do I, but apparently we cannot trust our feelings here, Anakin."

 _I wondered if modern loony bins still have those padded cells. And straight jackets…_

"There are no signals like ours." came the reply. "But the bigger problem is that they found their way here. They will send backup."

I could almost hear him smile. "I have a passenger." he said. _Well look, that´s me. The crazy girl._ "She has the transmitter that led them here and with a little luck they were only the vanguard. They were following her, but I found her in time."

"Wait, what? What kind of transmitter?" I interrupted.

The other pilot fell silent and ´Obi Wan´ (in my mind I did a last effort at sanity, saying his name while indicating quotation marks with my fingers) replied instead. "You grabbed your bag from the car. It´s why they kept following you. We can´t get it back down there without risking it being activated. It probably already is."

"I…I don´t know what…"

"It probably looks unremarkable. Metal. About the size of your hand."

My fingers were trembling when I reached for my bag. Not even noticing I had had it on my lap the entire time, even though it had skidded a little. I fumbled open the zipper with trembling fingers. Found the cool shape of the, as I had hoped, no trouble silver box I had nicked from Franklin hours ago, in another era it seemed. "Like…this?"

He reached for it worldlessly but with a nod. "Exactly." And then into the intercom. "It´s active. It must have been activated when we left the planet´s surface."

"They would have done the same if they had caught her. There is nothing that could have prevented it."

I was struggling with words, trying to get into the conversation again but there were so many questions on my mind that it seemed near impossible.

I had not even noticed that we were speeding towards two rings that hung in space, several meters across. While the intercom conversation carried on, our spaceship had slowed, entered one and I heard a brief, precise sequence of metalic clacks as the clasps clicked into space, looking us in the metal ring. _Wait…_

"Let´s do the calculations."

"This might take a moment, master. There is an asteroid belt between the fourth and the fifth. And another at the outskirts."

"I _am_ glad I don´t have to put myself through the agony of navigating that with you piloting today." Despite everything I liked his wit.

The other one sounded like half smirk when replying. "It doesn´t look too bad. We will have a safe way through in a moment. I have you located."

´Obi Wan´ turned over his shoulder to glance at me again. "This must all sound very confusing and I feel very uncomfortable having to get you out of there like this, but you´re in danger if I don´t. Your entire planet is. I will explain this as soon as we are out of your solar system. And I will take you back as soon as it is safe."

"My _**what?!**_ " Even to myself I sounded like my voice was tipping over. His reply was an understanding look.

"These ships aren´t equipped for long range hyperspace." he told me. "we just need to get to our rendezvous point. Don´t worry, we will soon have time for explanations."

"Calculations are ready, master."

"Mine as well."

And all of a sudden, the second spacecraft was gone, too fast for my brain to comprehend. And then time seemed to stop for a long, long second. Matter itself seemed to…stretch. And then the skies turned into a snowstorm of stars.

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 **A little shoutout to my first reviewer: Thank you, SunnySides. It´s nice to see you like it so far. I know this kind of fic is either something you like or not, but I like to write a range of genres and there are far too many ideas that come to mind not to toy with them. :) Also, this chapter might have started answering some of your questions, but I´ll intentionally keep you on the toes a bit about the rest. Hope you enjoy.**


	4. Lost in space

**Chapter 4 – Lost in space**

My first experience of hyperspace was terrifying. The almost complete void of space, the stark darkness turning into a blur as if all the light sources had been compressed into a far too narrow space. It was like nothing I had ever experienced, nothing that my mind seemed even equipped for and I spent however long it might have taken frozen in my seat. Then suddenly it ended. Space returned to normal (funny how quickly I was labelling space travel normal), pitch black and vast with exception of the second intercepter already waiting and, when I looked ahead, a much larger spacecraft a little further off. And by that I mean I could see it and it didn´t seem very far away. It didn´t mean a thing about distance because that seemed impossible for my untrained mind to determine and when we moved closer I mentally corrected byself several time. The thing was gigantic. A second metallic click and the fighter was released from the transport ring again.

The ship that I would later learn was a Ventor Class Star Destroyer of the Galactic Republic and went by the name of _Vigilance_ hung in space like a massive light grey and muted red arrowhead. More than a kilometre in length with the command tower raising on the rear end it seemed like so much more realistic than my mind could ever come up with on its own as part of a hallucination and I forgot talking or feeling travel sick or even nagging my jedi companion with more questions when we approached it and I tried to edge closer to the window to see what was happening. How we moved closer to the thing until a soft tug indicated we had connected with an invisible tractor beam, how we approached an opening to the side that I had not even initially spotted but that, as we approached the ship´s flank, revealed what almost looked like an entire city of docks, passages, locks and metal shields interlocking.

It was a true sense of wonder the kind that I feel we get far too rarely these days and for a few moments I was just staring, possibly by my mouth open. I am sure, Obi Wan must have been away of my flabberghastedness, but was kind enough not to poke fun at me. Maybe because dear Obi Wan knew I would soon get a whole load dumped on me and should at least remember my first impressions outside my own solar system fondly.

We landed in an area that had a wide open entrance to the side of the ship, flying through something that must be some sort of force field (not with a capital f, mind you) keeping the atmosphere in the landing bay separate from space. All around us was bustling with activity. A few dozen starfighters being tended to, most smaller than the one I was still in, a number of people in different kinds of clothes that still made it clear I would stick out from the crowd like a sore thumb in my jeans and burgundy winter coat both of which had suffered from the breakneck escape and made me look like I had been sleeping under a bridge for the last couple of days. I have no idea why, with everything else that I could have been worried about, that was even something my mind bothered with. Probably some ancient instinct protecting me from losing my marbles too quickly.

"I know this is a lot to take in, but there is nothing for you to worry about here. You may see things that scare you, but everybody here is your friend." Obi Wan said as he landed the ship, letting it hover gently before setting it down. I understood why he would say that. I figured he might take my silent wonder as the mere reaction of somebody who is at a loss for words which, mind you, I was. But I couldn´t really tell him that while it seemed insane to myself to see where I found myself and with who that at least I wasn´t scared of being in danger from those around me and how I knew that.

"Where are we going?" I asked, my voice sounding a little flat. My system was apparently not too adapted to all the flying and all the hyperjumping.

"I am going to take you to a med bay." he said, turning a little more this time, just after loosening his seat belt, so he could face me. "We do need to have a proper look at you I´m afraid. And at that transmitter." He had placed it aside but was pocketing it careful now.

"What about that, what…check me for what?" I had spontaneously decided that this might be the more interesting quesiton to be answered since it concered me directly. There was so much to process that my mind couldn´t process everything at the same time.

He gave me a smile which revealed a little teeth, making him look almost mischivous. Looking at him properly I could for the first time see his face fully, not in the dark of either the outside of the cockpit. Braving that intense gaze in combination with the twinkle in his eyes and smile was a challenge. I hoped he wouldn´t notice me blushing and cursed myself inwardly for it. "Just to see if everything is all right." he said. "I will explain everything as soon as that is done, but you might carry germs that we cannot afford to spread here."

"Excuse me?"

His face softened a little, a polite apology in his eyes. "I didn´t mean to offend." he said, hands flying over controls to shut down the machine. "It will all make sense once we know more. Can you walk?"

I had not moved yet, clutching my bag, still with my seatbelt on.

"The latch is to your right." Hhe informed me, indicating and then waited patiently until I had found it. It crossed my mind why the heck didn´t he just use the Force to help me out…but then again who knew what about that was true as well. Or maybe, much more considerate, he just didn´t want to scare me.

"You were exhausting yourself running." he said. "and judging from the limited information I have you have never travelled hyperspace."

"Space." I corrected. "I have never travelled space."

His eyebrows rose in surprise. The cockpit had opened and he hoisted himself up, crouching on the hull and offering a hand. I grabbed it and, as he pulled me up out of my seat, noticed how darn shaky my legs were.

"Which is all the more reason why your circulation is likely to give you trouble." he remarked, sounding like a teacher who was content about being proven right but not too cocky about it. Meanwhile I tried to stagger out of the intercepter with trembling legs while my hands tingled the way they do when you´re not too far from a collapse. "Whoa …"

"Easy there. Let me help you." He added a second hand and I somehow managed, then helped me down a ladder that had been fetched from somewhere. I felt like a 90 year old lady who needed assistnance. Or like an idiot. Imaging getting off some awesome looking starfighter in the most incredible looking real version of a goddamn Galactic Battle Cruiser… and your legs are shaking so badly because you were raised on a planet of disconnected space noobs that you don´t look a fraction as badass doing it as you should.

He didn´t make fun of me. Instead, as soon as I touched…wobbled…ground, he offered to take my bag and handed it to the young man who had silently arrived at his side after landing his own ship. Then, with a polite. "It´s easiest that way. I don´t want you to drop." He unceremoneously and surprisingly gently picked me up in his arms, only giving me time to quickly hold on with one arm around his neck before he strode off.

Had I been worried about blushing a moment earlier? What worried me now, much more than girlish insecurities whilst being graciously carried by a real as life jedi was the man that instantly fell in beside us and whose eyes gave me a wary glance over. Unruly dark hair, slim, agile looking features and his clothes ironically the yin to Obi Wan´s yang, I felt myself under the keen and testing look of a young Anakin Skywalker. It made me uneasy and I looked away after a brief moment, heart pounding.

"Emily. Meet Anakin Skywalker." Obi Wan said superfluously as he walked. „My pa… pupil." He had changed mid word, naturally assuming that ´padawan´ would not be part of my active vocabulary.

"Hi." I said, sounding clipped.

He gave a nod in acknowledgement. "It sounds like you were lucky my master was around. Who in turn was lucky I was around." In any other situation I would have appreciated the tease.

Obi Wan chuckled. "Let´s get her to the med bay first." he said. „Please do feel free to tell him he is being insufferably boastful whenever you feel like it." he added.

If he had hoped for a lighthearted remark to his banter as I had a feeling already these two were used to, it didn´t happen.

"Master." he said, his voice a little lowered and his eyes , darting my direction for a brief moment, betraying that he rather wanted to tell Obi Wan without me being around, but the matter to pressing, too urgent, to wait. But since he didn´t know that I was very well aware of much more of the realities of his world than he could possibly guess, he probably thought what he said next would not alarm me, simply because I would know what he was talking about. However, I very well did.

"I tried to access the storage of the docking rings. Their memory was wiped."

If I hadn´t been carried already, the moment I heard him say this would probably have been my cue to collapse.. I felt icy cold dread fill my blood. _Their memory was wiped…_ That could only mean one thing: We had needed those docking rings to carry us through hyper space, our own ships too small to have a hyperdrive of their own… and if their memories had been wiped somehow… that mean that ere was probably no way finding a way back to Earth.

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 **Author´s note: I hope you enjoyed this one, and thanks to hannamariakatherine for following along. :)**


	5. Bounty

**Chapter 5 – Bounty**

The memory has been wiped. That thought alone was thrumming through my mind, beating in the rhythm of Obi Wan´s steps. _Wiped. Wiped. Wiped…_ It was scary. And just too much right now. It is interesting how easy denial can be. You just push yourself into that state, like a kid hiding behind his own hands and naively believing that just because he can´t see anyone, nobody can see him.

The med bay was every bit as futuristic as I had anticipated it to be and yet, once more, much more realistic and sophisticated looking with all its instruments and gadgets than any movie maker could have thought up. White walls and appliances, two examination chairs and stretchers each, adaptable for varying shapes and heights of beings. Two medical droids with soft looking features and precise yet slow movements as if constructed based on a human´s fears of such things with the intention of taking that fear away from the start. The one that rolled towards the door immediately once they slid open had a roundish face but just one eye. I would probably have been stopped in my tracks by the strangeless but I was still being carried.

"General Kenobi." The droid´s voice sounded reassuring and upbeat yet strangely devoid of emotions, giving me weird kind of chills for its semblace to the droid that I had seen assist a young woman give birth to twins on a movie screen. The only thing that made this less haunting was the fact that Anakin had stayed behind a corridor earlier – not before giving me a glance that was difficult to read, but that for some reason I had interpreted as suspicion. Well, that was a feeling that was mutual…

Apparently having sensed me tense up at the sight of the machine, Obi Wan set me down carefully and said. "This must be strange for you. I will send for another assistant to help out."

I felt silly for having to hold on to his shoulder after attempting a step. I was still feeling so shaky.

"Help out with what?" I asked.

He guided me over so I could sit on one of the stretchers before answering. "We need to run some tests. Nothing bad. Blood tests mostly. Both to see if you took any injuries and to see whether you carry anything from your home planet that could be dangerous here. And for more practical matters."

"Like…"

"Like finding out whether your dizziness is maybe the origin of your body not being used to our oxigen saturation."

He said this without any interruption but I was wondering whether that was really everything he was thinking, because for reasons I couldn´t grasp this didn´t make too much sense to me. And at the same time I suddenly wondered whether he could pick up on my thoughts. My emotions. If this was really the Obi Wan I knew from the movies, which he seemed to be in his own strange right, he might be able to. Through the Force. I nodded and as I did focused all my thoughts on one thought: _**Can you hear me?**_

If his expression changed at all it was too subtle for me to notice.

"How long will this take?" I asked, instantly wondering what answer to expect. Did they even calculate in minutes? Hours? If so…hours of what? What was the standard? Some planet´s rotation? I believed I had read that to be Coruscant somewhere. _**Co-rus-cant**_. I attempted to send to him, focusing on that name with every thought I had. Again, his neutrally gentle expression didn´t change. "Not long." he said, then turned, a second, I noticed, before a door slid open and a human woman stepped in, maybe in her mid fourties. I felt a tingle run down my spine. He had sensed that woman for sure, before she had arrived. So probably the Force was real as well. "And I will be with you right after you are done, I promise."

"Thank you."

He gave the smallest of bows when he stepped away and, before he turned, added: "You are very brave, Emily. I know this must be overwhelming."

 _ **Oh dear,**_ I attempted to send to him once more. _**You haven´t the slightest idea.**_

The medical exam turned out fairly standard. Maybe there is an instinctive procedure to examine humans. The doctor didn´t speak much but when she did, she was polite. She tested my reflexes, examined my eyes, ears and mouth and finally took a blood sample, putting it into a machine with a monitor of sorts that I could not see. Her face remained impassive while she did some measurements or calculations or whatever and then she told me to rest a little until the results were in. She offered to show me to a little cabin, more functional than comfortable, but still rather nice, just a few metres square with a bed, some space for clothes – and the most breathtaking view right out into the star freckled darkness of space. I lay down, making sure I could look outside. The view was too amazing to miss and yet so vast my brain was having a hard time comprehending.

There was no way I could find rest though. Even though I did curl up on that stretcher I didn´t even remove my coat. Not because I was cold but probably because it was one of the few things that were not strange to me. I even pulled my legs up a little, laying in an almost fetal position as I let my mind run its course for the first time since all the craziness had begun.

However all this made sense I couldn´t tell. For some reason this man had shown up on my planet, proving that what I so far had believed to be mere stories of a galaxy far far away was a very real reality in our very own galaxy. Why that was so I couldn´t tell. But in any way, it brought a whole truckload of consequences which I tried to break down systematically. I have never been very systematic.

What would I tell them I wondered. _Him_ I corrected myself. I had already decided that while he didn´t look or seem hostile, but merely a little distanced, I did not trust Anakin Skywalker. A childish thought maybe and pretty prejudiced keeping in mind that he was very obviously still a jedi here, in the middle of the Clone Wars era but I could use a corny phrase and say I had a bad feeling about him for obvous reasons. But Obi Wan… what would I tell him? While thinking about this I thought suddenly that trying to make him read my thoughts had been a risky move. I mean, here was me, equipped with knowledge about the lives of people on this ship. Knowledge about their world, their wars, their futures. It was hard to estimate what would happen if they knew. And if they knew what did it mean? Would it give them the possibility to change what was happening? Would it alter the course of things? My initial thought was that changing things might save them a lot of heartbreak but then … what if changing things tipped events into an even worse direction? Such as the Empire wiping out people that had been intended to survive? Such as some characters never being born? So were they just destined to run their paths through the story like hamsters in a wheel, believing that they would eventually get somewhere while their choices only made them end up at an already predetermined outcome?

Any of these thoughts was unsettling. I decided that if possible for now I would keep things to myself. It would draw way too much attention to me to reveal I knew of such things. It had a disturbing potential to cause chaos and heck, I didn´t want anybody´s blood on my hands. Probably, my presence in this story was already an anomality.

Second, and directly resulting from that…how was all of this possible? How was all of this real? How was is possible that all of this, the ship, the jedi, the lightsabers I had seen (hilts only…I badly wanted to see one in action or better: one one.) actually existed? Or had reality somehow inspired fiction and we had just not known until now? But then… the stories I knew spanned decades further into the future and how did that all fit in?

And in all of this I was successfully pushing away the probably most disturbing thought of all: that Anakin had mentioned the transport rings and their wiped memories. What if I was stranded out here, god knew how far from home? The idea alone made me dizzy again and I almost panically tried to push it away.

I was just busy considering a few more minor questions such as whether the two jedi had been hiding their reactions to my thoughts, because I took it for granted that they could read them, and whether what they had seen had caused Anakin to give me that strange look before Obi Wan dropped me off at the med bay… when the door slid open. I was half expecting the doctor to return, but it was Obi Wan. He had taken off his cloak and was now wearing fresh leight beige pants and the oblgatory tunic, belted around the waist with his lightsaber hilt clipped to it. "May I?" I nodded and he stepped in. "You are awake." he added. "I was not sure whether to let you sleep for a few hours but there are things we need to discuss and I am sure you have a lot of questions. Not all of them I will be able to answer. A lot of what happened is unclear to us too."

I sat up on the bed and noticed that he briefly let his eyes travel to my winter coat, still zipped up. He didn´t remark on it and stayed silent for a moment as if thinking about how to best frame a tricky diagnosis. I decided to break the somewhat awkward silence.

"So…am I carrying any…germs?"

He shook his head lightly. "I was told the results would be in shortly. The doctor who saw you will be here as soon as she finished the analysis. Meanwhile we should talk about what happened."

I moved a little to the side so he could sit down, which he did after a brief hesitation. "I am aware this is new for you." he began again, rephrasing what he had said earlier. "But believe me when I say nobody on this ship is your enemy."

Well, him knowing I knew would make things easier but saying something at the risk of upsetting an entire already established timeline didn´t seem like something the universe would forgive too easily, quite literally speaking.

"I…I´m fine, I think." I said. "for now."

"I understand your planet has never had any contact with humans from other planets or other species."

"No, we haven´t. We´ve uh…actually started to look for them, life on other planets I mean, but so far it´s just conspiracy theorists and nutjobs who believe in having made contact."

"Nutjobs?" The word sounded almost sophisticated when he said it and his eyebrows travelled upwards in slight amusement. Apparently he understood this to be an insult but not ist meaning. "Let me tell you that anybody who claims he has heard a signal from another life form on your planet was either lying of delusional."

I straightened up a little, frowning now. "Wellll..and look and where I am now. I am pretty much sitting next to an extraterrestrial right now." I challenged.

"This is different and I will explain. I cannot be certain but right now I believe the two following you when I picked you up were bounty hunters on a mission."

„Bounty hunters." I am not sure if I had intended those two words as a statement or question.

He paused, no doubt reconstructing his vocabulary to use only words he assumed I knew. "Assassins sometimes hired for other things as well. They were looking for something which is why they were after you."

"Well I didn´t really carry anything of value so…"

In that moment Obi Wan pulled an object out of a pocket at the side of his tunic and placed it on the bed between us wordlessly. I instantly recognised it. It was the small metal object I had intended to trade for some cash at the pawnshop. But apparently there was more to it. Was this thing maybe the reason these other guys had been shooting at me?

"What …what is that?"

"It is a transmitter." Obi Wan explained and turned it around to reveal that where the surface had formerly been smooth and spotless, now a small window of metal had been rolled to the side to reveal a wild array of chips and cables. "Anakin deactivated it. I have seen these before. They are used by all kinds of species who explore remote planets in the unchartered regions of the galaxy usually and leave them … as markers so to say. Another who has the coutnerpart of the transmitter, can follow to its location and find the planet again that has not yet been assigned coordinates on the galactic map."

"This is…." But I didn´t know how to continue my sentence.

"Where did you get it?"

"It belonged to my boss."

He just looked at me. Damn those eyes.

"Okay I…I stole it. I was desperate, I needed the money." I felt embarrassed and confused. Was this thing the reason I got into trouble in the first place?

"These transmitters are usually inactive but something has triggered it. Maybe you, maybe it was programmed to activate once it was taken off the planet again. In any way, I assume that it has been there for a while. Inactive, in disguise to be used when the time was considered right."

"But…why?"

"There are always some that have an interest in so far undiscovered worlds. Even those that would be considered uncivilised."

Despite everything I had to bite back a chuckle. _You can say that again_ I thought to myself.

"Those two that were following me…why were they?"

„They needed the transmitter. If it has been lost they could not have activated it and used it for their benefit any more. It would have been useless. And they wanted to get rid of transmitters are extremely rare. They might have been working for someone. Or they would just be bounty hunters, hoping for a good price and information in exchange for the proper coordinates for so far undiscovered but potentially profitable worlds."

"So basically some… space scouts discovered my planet, planted one of those transmitters in my boss´ shop and hoped to sell information about our location to someone who was shopping for a few new planets?"

"That is one likely possibility. I even consider it likely that one of the two was the man you were working for. He must have noticed the transmitter was gone."

I shook my head in wild disbelief. „No, no no. No way. Franklin was just a slightly weird older guy."

"Possibly in disguise." Obi Wan remarked. "Some species can do that." I felt a chill as I recalled that scene… The assassin that had changed her shape in death. I felt myself shake my head again. Certainly not Franklin…

I shifted a little, drawing my legs a little closer, my mind racing, trying to put together the pieces. Who could be behind this? And during the clone wars… what the heck could possibly be interesting about Earth in a universe teeming with technology we could only dream of?

"Why?" I asked feeling stupid because even though this world felt so familiar, apparently there were so many things that I needed to have spelled out.

"Maybe resources." he said. "But from what I could tell your planet didn´t seem extraordinarily rich in any way so we will have to find out. Someone seems to be showing an interest in remote planets of late. Especially those that are so this away from the known regions of the galaxy."

I tilted my head a little, reminded of something Mr Shumer, my old science teacher had said years back. _If you look at the galaxy and our place in it, then by Star Wars standards we would definitely be considered Outer Rim territories. Maybe even less interesting than that. We are pretty much in the least exciting neighbourhood of the galaxy, very far from the core._ Obi Wan seemed to guess that I was trying to put things together and added. "I know distance is hard to understand, but a large part of this galaxy is known to us. There are however regions that we are very unaware of. Areas with undiscovered worlds…" He seemed to stop himself from saying more. "and yours is one of those."

I narrowed my eyes, frowning. "And how did you find me then?"

"We had been on the tails of these bounty hunters for a while." he replied. "We were curious where they would end up going."

I felt my frown deepen, not one of annoyance but bewilderment, trying to understand a lot at once. "But you said there had been no alien…I mean,… no contact with Ear…with my planet."

"That is true." Obi Wan said and as he did so there was a small smile at the corner of his mouth. "We could find them because their breeching of the outskirts of your system drew our attention. Apparently your solar system is one of those that have been under a sort of quarantine."

I felt my mouth open. "A what?"

"Your solar system has been in a sort of … recluse." he explained. "something that has been shielding it from the rest of the galaxy. A cosmic anomaly that happens at times but is rare. Try to imagine it like a bubble maybe. You are under a glass dome that way. Isolated from what is going on outside it. Or you were."

"So…" things were starting to make sense. "some freak accident of cosmic evolution led to my solar system not being able to receive or send out messages, like some… dead zone?"

"An accident or purpose by a civilisation of a long bygone age." Obi Wan corrected, baffling me even more. "In any way, something led to that isolation being broken."

I thought. Hard. But in this moment, being a bit of a popular science buff came in handy.

"It was…. In the news a while ago that the first unmanned somethng… sattelite or space probe had left the solar system and passed out of our reach." I said finally.

"That could have been what the bounty hunters picked up on and how they found your system."

I exhaled a sigh, feeling the pressure against my temple. "All of this is crazy…"

"And you are taking all of this remarkably well as I already said."

 _Well_ , I thought to myself. _It does help when the first aliens you meet are those whose movie representation used to decorate the walls in your room when you were still a kid. Kind of takes some of the shock._ Or dulls it for a while. I was aware that I might be severely overtaxed and my apparent calmness was just my mind´s survival strategy.

In that moment the door slid open again making me wonder whether there was a little mistrust against me involved after all or whether this was just a medic bay resting room of sorts that was not considered a place for much privacy. This time it was the doctor who had examined me. And next to her, and judging from her somewhat frightened expression functioning as a reassuring bodyguard, was Anakin. Two pairs of eyes first went to Kenobi, then me, then back to Kenobi.

"I have the blood test results, general." The doctor announced and I beleived to hear her voice was shaking a little. "she is in good health but…I am afraid I found something very strange."

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 **Author´s note: This chapter turned out a little longer than the others because I felt that some exposition was necessary to start and untangle Emily´s situation.**

 **SunnySides: You ask all the right questions actually. :) Oh yes, what she knows and whether or not she blurts it out or it gets out in some way is an issue, obviously. Also, I was hoping that people would pick up on all of this being somewhat strange, especially since Emily´s knowledge in some way would have been spotted through Obi Wan and Anakin´s Force sensitivity. Some of these questions (with regards to how Emily got where she is now) have hopefully been answered. As for many of the others you have been asking…they will be in the next chapter(s). There is a concept behind it all and the groundwork for why the jedi behaved the way they did is rooted in what was explained in chapter five. It will make sense soon. Unfortunately no, I do not have a schedule with regards to updates. My work life is very busy and I have to write when I can. I hope you can be patient with me.**


	6. Invisible woman

**Chapter 6 – Invisible woman**

I am not sure what alarmed me more in that moment – the grave look of barely withheld confusion on the doctor´s face or the way Anakin was looking at me. Even in reality, the young jedi apparently wasn´t very good at hiding his emotions and concerning me there seemed to be a whole ot of mistrust involved, judging from the slight frown and the way his lips were set in a nonsmiling line. I silently wondered whether to a fellow senstive this frown was feelable as tension in the Force. At least to me the air seemed dense and I had no inkling of that special talent. "I think this is something we should discuss in private, Master." Anakin said in a low voice that I registered as very much in line with that perceived suspicion, looking at me instead of Obi Wan when he talked. I felt myself mirror his frown, feeling some annoyance rise in myself at the way he just talked over my head and opened my mouth to protest but found myself a second too late for that. At least one of the jedi had no trouble picking up on a lack of politeness.

"Is it something dangerous?"Obi Wan asked in an alert but calm, polite voice, glancing at the healer and when she shook her head but meant to say something , he quickly cut in. "Good. Then I think we need to discuss it here. All of us. Emily has had enough to take in already, it would be neither wise nor fair to not let her know what is going on." 

The doctor hesitated for a moment, her eyes darting from the younger to the older of the men, but quickly assessing the proverbial foodchain between these two said. "She…well," she redirected her glance at me, clutching what looked like a datapad in her hands. "…you are perfectly fine. I can see no dangerous or hazardous conditions after a thorough analysis of your blood sample. The dizziness you have experienced is not due to a different level of oxigen saturation, that much is for sure. What we breathe in fact and what we are used to is very similar to the conditions on your home planet, remote as it might be. However, there was something highly unusual that I found." She interrupted herself again, glancing at Obi Wan, and when she continued, she spoke to him again, not me. It was immediately clear why she did that. She obviously thought that I would not know what she was talking about. But, I did. Only too well, George Lucas be thanked. "I have…run the tests twice, general Kenobi."she said. "but what I found is that her midiclorian count is inexplainably low."

That didn´t seem to phase Obi Wan. He nodded ever so slightly, as if he had expected something like that. "We all know, healer, that midiclorian counts vary greatly among individuals and species."

"Of course." the healer gave back. "But not to that extent. Her count is so low it barely registers." She handed him her datapad, instantly leaving her at a loss of what to do with her hands so she merely interlaced them. I could see she was pressing them together so tightly that her knuckles showed white and I understood. Coming across someone with a barely countable midiclorian count was probably similar to learning that there were people that walked and breathed without their heads.

I could see Obi Wan´s expression become thoughtful, then surprised. "I had a suspicion. But this is astonishing." he muttered.

 _Wait… a suspicion?_

"I would say." The woman seemed uneasy, tossing me a glance. _Well, take a good look at me,_ I thought to myself. _Look at the freak._ She did, and continued. "I was not aware that life was possible with such a low count…in particular…sentient life."

Well, let´s just say freak or not, I was able to detect an insult against my intelligence when I heard one. At least in this moment with her talking over my head, Anakin semi-glaring at me as if I was about to jump up and attack him and the additional strain of me being literally lost in space, I couldn´t keep myself from speaking up. And not in the smartest or most intelligent way either. "Whoa, seriously. You can bet your ass I´m senti…" I stopped immediately as Obi Wan reached out and placed a hand on my knee, giving me a reassuring but pacifying look. I stopped talking. Immediately. I possibly also blushed.

"It makes sense." Anakin interjected tersely, crossing his arms. "She seemed strange to me right when you carried her off the fighter, master. I couldn´t …"

"…sense me."

 _Crap._

By the way Skywalker´s gaze hardened in suspicion I immediately knew I had made a mistake. Of course that was the reason for his guarded behaviour earlier. The reason also why Obi Wan had not reacted to my attempt to shoot thoughts at him. The reason why none of the jedi had reacted in a way that implied they were using the Force on me or were even indirecly reading or perceiving me. If they had, I´d have some uncomfortable questions to answer.

"Yes." he said, slowly, almost menacingly. "How do you know?"

"Uhm…" I started stammering, frantically looking for an excuse. I couldn´t tell him I knew about the Force after all. Obi Wan had told me earlier after all that Earth had been a so far unknown planet. And therefore knowing about the Force meant to possibly reveal I knew much, much more. Things I needed to sort out first, certainly not information to be blurted out. What I knew about who they were, who they would become. I was suddenly dead scared about messing with their fates. "Just…intuition." I lied.

"There is something very strange about her, master…" Anakin began again, shifting on his leg.

"Anakin." Just one word, spoken in a low voice, but in clear warning.

"I am just saying she might be dangerous. We don´t even know about the conditions of her home planet. With how isolated it was, the Force…"

"You will leave this to me, my young _padawan_." It was probably a mix of the shock of Anakin dropping that aprticular F-bomb and the borderline authoritarian tone in Obi Wan´s voice as he said that last word. The look Anakin gave his master was stubbornness.

"Please, leave us alone." It was directed both at the healer and the padawan. One second, two seconds of a silent staring contest between the two men, then Anakin surrendered. "I will be right outside if you need me, master." He almost drawled when turning and giving me a long look. The door slid open, the two of them left, the door slid close.

Obi Wan gave a sigh, before turning to me. "I am sorry for the behaviour of my apprentice." he said. "This is an unusual situation for all of us and he has a tendency to be impulsive. He only means well-"

 _Okay, Em, you need to play along, wrong as it feels_. "More unusual than being spirited off your planet when so far you didn´t even know there WAS sentient life outside your home world?" I gave back, not following my own advice. I felt mean about that sounding somewhat harsh but couldn´t help it that moment. He gave me a look that bore no reproach, then waited a moment, as if to give me time to sort through my turmoil of thougts. "What confused the healer was that your blood lacks a central ingredient, at least according to what we know of the blood of any living creature."

"Midiclorians." I blurted out. A light smile, maybe because he thought me smart for remembering that tricky word after first hearing. "Yes." he said. "They are organelles we know exist in the cells of every livng thing." He handed me the datapad that showed a number of confusing data I couldn´t read but I understood he wanted to make things understandable for me. "Your count is very low."

I stayed silent, wondering what that meant. Well, obviously that shattered my career perspectives as a jedi, but…

"Ever since midiclorians were discovered thousands of years ago we thought them integral to life." Obi Wan continued. "to a being´s connection to what we call the Force."

I took a breath. "The Force." What I intended more as a statement out of reflex, he naturally took as a question before launching into ´the talk´. The talk that any geek on Earth would have given a lot for to hear. And from a real jedi at that.

"The Force is an energy field that binds the entire galaxy together. It´s a force of nature, most essential to all life. It exists within every living thing and binds us, penetrates us. The midiclorians are the parts of our cells that are the mediators between the Force and an organism. Beings with an above avery midiclorian count can actively attune themselves to the Force. They can sense other beings, they can train their senses in order to feel the Force and act through it."

 _Somewhere in my head, John Williams conducted a tiny little orchestra into a dramatic flourish of the piece nicknamed ´Binary sunset.´_ I shook my head because this was just a little much.

"I understand t is a lot to take in." Obi Wan said with a gentle smile, misunderstanding my loss of words. "and it seems like the isolation your planet has been submitted to has existed for an indescribably long time. Long enough for there to have developed natural laws that differ from what we believed were integral to the galaxy." Despite his honest attempt to explain Star Wars 1.0 to the seeming unsuspecting human weirdo even Obi Wan could not completely hide his astonishment.

"So I don´t have midiclorians and therefore I don´t have the Force." I concluded, deciding this was a safe enough thing to conclude feeling a strange pang of disappointment as I said it.

"Oh, you _do_ have midiclorians." he corrected me, pointing to some numeral on the datapad. Different symbols, different numbers. I had no idea what they signified. "which makes me guess they are integral to life and that apparently even cosmic isolation cannot completely shut out the Force." He smiled that damn charming smile. "but too low to feel its effect. Much lower than those of Force sensitive beings."

"Such as yourself."

He tilted his head just a little. "Indeed." A question implied.

"An…your apprentice mentioned not being able to sense me. I figured that sensing someone is something the Force helps you do."

"You are a very keen observer." he said, sounding like he meant it. _Keen observer. Avid moviegoer…_ "Anakin and myself are jedi. We belong to an ancient order whose members are chosen due to their connection to the Force and their talent to be connected to it." I noticed how he deliberately avoided the term ´use´ and found it profoundly fitting. Not the jedi way to use the Force, to submit it to their will, but to act through it. I nodded, feeling kind of numb, my thoughts racing. Maybe in this moment I was realising full on that it was ALL real. Not just the coincidence of a guy with _that_ name and _that_ ship showing up on my planet and wearing _that_ weapon on his belt. But all of it true. The Force. Midiclorians. I felt dizzy again all over again.

"I take it there is no such thing as an allusion to something like the Force on your home world?" he asked, apperently looking for confirmation. _Yes there is. All over the place. Just not the way you might expect, master jedi._ But I knew his question went beyond merchandise so what I said next was something I actually believed. "No." I say. "Not in the way you describe. I mean… there is intuition. What we call the sixth sense. The feeling that you sense someone come into a room and look up a second before that happens or how when something happens to someone you love you…" I interrupted myself, realising something. _Could that be possible?_ "…you feel it." I trailed off.

He nodded slowly. "A weak representation of the Force." he concluded. "but if your midiclorian count is any indicator of what is typical for your world, or your part of the galaxy which by the way is very unknown even to us, then your people are not what we call Force sensitive. Or very very few might be."

My thoughts were racing. "Force sensitive meaning…"

"Sensing things." Obi Wan confirmed what I already knew. "Moving things with your mind. Visions of the future."

I felt my fingers tingle. "I…do not think that this is what typically happens on my planet." _Only when it does people make movies about it, apparently._ The thought was a shock.

He nodded. "I was surprised that I could not sense your presence. Not the way I usually do. Now we know why."

"Wh..what does that mean?" In that moment I felt strangely lost, strangely cold. Like I was disconnected from the rest of them, this handful of people who were the only ones whose names I even knew so far away from home. Literally disconnected.

"I am not sure." He leant back, letting a hand run through his short beard contemplatively. "I believe that you are not in immediate danger because of this difference but with everything going on it might be wisest to consult others about it to be certain. Also to be sure what all of this means. Why your planet was seen a worthy bounty for those that planted the transmitter. A lot of this is clouded from me so far, but there are others that might shed some light on it yet." 

"Other jedi?" I asked. This seemed like an endless spiral down the proverbial rabbit hole at breakneck speed with my mind still trying to catch up on the magnitude of this reality. He nodded. "You need to know that your safety and wellbeing is important to us. You are under our protection, but we cannot return you to your home planet just yet. Not before we are sure that doing this would not put it in danger in its entirety."

Or, I wondered silently, until you find it again? Wasn´t that what Anakin had hinted at? I kept eye contact in an attempt to discover Obi Wan was hiding that uncomfortable truth from me. I couldn´t find it and nodded after a moment, my words not quite in line at all with how I felt which was confused, numb and also tired. "I understand."

He suppressed another sigh. "I have said this before but I feel sorry for pushing you into all this. Hardly any mind would be able to cope with all of this at once. You should rest." He was probably right and still right now I kind of didn´t want to be alone. Didn´t at all like the idea of being left in this room with just the walls around me and space somewhere beyond as an infinite void dotted with stars. I wanted to ask how far from home I was, but didn´t dare, scared to add one more thing to the number of unbelievable things I had heard since I met him.

"Where…" I started, feeling helpless.

"There are vacant living quarters aboard this ship." he said. "and one has already been prepared. It is not far from here, it is warm, it is comfortable and you will find all you need. I can take you there right now and you can rest however long you need to."

I got to my feet. I didn´t want to be alone and yet I yearned to be so I could try to grasp it all. And to lay down. To rest and let my thoughts come to rest. He rose as well and, probably out of habit, used a motion of his hand rather than the buzzer to open the door. A subtle gesture but it didn´t escape my attention. It added to the marvel, it also added to me feeling disconnected from that marvel.

He led me down the corridor not without keeping a subtle eye on me as if to check I had overcome my dizziness but I was grateful he gave me the dignity of walking on my own. Still, I hugged my coat tight. It indeed wasn´t far. A few paces down the corridor, then a turn to the right and he slid open the door to what turned out to be rather spacious quarters, a room maybe 200 square feet, equipped with a sleeping nook, storage, another door that I figured led to some washing facility. There were clothes on a stool. Not mine. I just had the ones I was wearing. I hesitated for a moment, slowly taking off my coat. I had put it back on after the doctor…healer as they called them here, had run her tests on me. I had traded my soaked jeans and was wearing light khaki pants she had given me but I had insisted on my thick turtleneck sweater. I was feeling a little chill nonetheless, suddenly exposed without my coat. "I´ll..try those on later." I said, refering to the neatly folded fresh clothes. Too much, too much at once. Suddenly all I wanted was to sleep. To lay down, to finally calm the turmoil of my thoughts. I stared ahead, through the window, similarly big as the one in the other room before, but what had seemed gorgeous earlier was strange now. Unknown. Alien. A dark space full of unknown stars. I swallowed.

"Are you all right?" His voice was gentle.

I shook my head. "I just…I should rest some. Things will look different after that." What if I wake up, I suddenly thought. Would that be a good thing? I didn´t know. I could hear the slide of the door behind me, could hear the very faint rustle of his robes as he turned to leave to grant me what seemed like very direly needed privacy.

"Obi Wan?"

He stopped. „Yes?"

I was just following an instinct. Just the urge to escape the strange feeling of being lost and alone and further from home than anyone I knew had ever been. Not intending to be weird. Or suggestive. In any way. „Could you…" I broke off, feeling awkward. But apparenty what I meant to say didn´t need the Force to be picked up on.

"It is all right." he simply said. "I will stay until you are asleep."

I didn´t even look at him. I heard the door slit down again. Heard him shift as he sat down. I didn´t want him to see that mix of embarrassment and confusion, didn´t want him to see that I was suddenly feeling like there was something in my throat. "Thank you." I just said. And just like that I merely kicked off my shoes and crawled under the blankets and curled up. And fell asleep.


	7. Alien technology

**Chapter 7**

 **Alien technology**

When I woke up there was no way of telling how late it was. How long I had slept. Funny how we are always so bound to times and minutes and clocks down on Earth. It just takes a tiny littly jump out of your solar system to notice how arbitrary measuring time actually is. Night? Day? Hard to tell in space. How long even is a day? Well, I was about to learn that this really depends for reals on how quickly a particular rock in space is spinning. What made it easier for Earthling little me was that what we call a day´s length is not so different from how these folks I had just met measured it. Coruscant, it turned out, has days of similar lengths to Earth. How convenient.

So when I woke up there was no way of telling how long I had been sleeping. The first thing I noticed was probably that the blackness of star dotted space I had gazed at blankly right before falling asleep had once more been replaced with the greyish-blue haze of hyperspace, instantly bringing back memories of what had happened, anchoring all this craziness in reality. Whether it really was reality or whether I should rather stick to that previously entertained idea I had simply gone bonkers and all of this was happening in my head I once more procastinated on deciding. The second thing I noticed was that – Force sensitive or, like in my case, not- I could just tell that I was alone in the room. I rolled over, looking at the door for confirmation. It was closed. There was a chair or sorts between it and another slide door that I at least hoped led into some kind of bathroom. It was neatly aligned with the wall and it was empty. Obi Wan was gone. That was probably good as it was. At least it saved me the embarrassment of being a little awkward in retrospect about asking a stranger to watch over me sleep.

I got up, feeling a little groggy as I did so, bad taste in my mouth, slight headache wrecking my temples and I noticed I was both thirsty and my stomach was groveling in protest of having been forgotten for whoever knows how long. My winter coat was draped over the end of the bed, untouched and for a moment I was wondering where my jeans had gone before remembering that I had gotten the khakis I was wearing now at the med bay. I glanced over at the side of the bed to find that same neat stack of clothes I had seen there the evening – yeah, let´s just call it evening, it´s bound to have been evening somewhere – before. I walked over, reached to pick up the clothes. Held them to me. They looked like they might fit all right. An almost black pair of pants of some unknown cloth, a light beige long sleeve shirt and somethng like slim cut dark blue longish vest with only the hint of sleeves. It looked outlandish enough for me to feel a slight nerdy tingle of excitement in my otherwise completely empty stomach and I had to smile despite everything. There was a belt too and I had no idea where and how to wear it but guessed just from my visual memory of things that it was possibly going over the vest rather than under. And then there were boots, black … leather I guessed even though there was no way of telling what creature´s hide had been used for those.

I was feeling rather confident and in an okay mental state when I took those clothes and walked over to the other door in the room. I found a flat metal button next to it and when I pressed it the door slid open smoothly, revealing, as I found to my relief, a sort of bathroom. I did a step in..then faltered. There was a sink of sorts, but that was where the similarities stopped. I placed the clothes down on the floor and approached what I instinctively guessed had to be the shower. A large tube shaped something made of almost transparent material. But when I looked inside there was neither a showerhead of any kind nor any buttons to begin with. "Great…" I muttered under my breath, trying around, letting my fingers slide along the smooth walls looking for something maybe hidden in the tiles. Nothing. Not wanting to look like the uncivilised offworlder I no doubt was for everyone on board I spent quite some time attempting to figure out how everything worked before having to admit to myself that I was getting nowhere with my feeble attempts of figuring out alien technology. Aware that I was probably not smelling my freshest any more I left for the bedroom. I´d need to get some help.

I slid open the door to my quarters and poked my head out looking down the corridor. Nobody in sight. Just a number of identical doors. I thought to dimly remember which direction the med bay was. I hesitated for a moment before stepping out and looked for something to orientate myself on as I turned right and walked down the corridor, simply counting doors so I would hopefully find my room again.

There was the soft rumble of engines against my feet. I didn´t know then, but the crew quarters one of which I had been taken to were harboured on the left side of the ship´s arrowhead shapen hull, living quarters, the med bay, mess and storage rooms located along the corridors that led away from the cargo area we had docked to and all the way out to the outer hull. A room with a window, I later understood, was not a given and had probably been arranged to make my stay more pleasant and the feel of space travel less crazy. I am not sure it helped even though I would grow to love the look of space eventually. Back then on my first hours on the _Vigilance_ , it more both fascinated and terrified me.

I made a few steps down the corridor, reminding myself to count doors. I wasn´t even sure these doors had locks on them so just barging into someone else´s quarter because I miscounted was not something I planned on doing.

"Looking for someone?"

I jumped and spun. Anakin Skywalker had been sitting with his feet dangling in a nook on the left side of the corridor where the dim light had hidden him well. And why was he doing that? Creep…

"Uh…" I stammered, heart beating fast from the shock. "…I am kind of trying to figure out the showers."

Great. Where are all these maintenance workers and random aliens to ask for some friendly advice when you need them?

A look of confusions crossed his face. "The showers?"

Right. Didn´t they call them ´freshers´ or something? I was inwardly glad I reminded myself in time to not correct myself out loud. I couldn´t know these things after all and it would probably just have made this guy more suspicious towards me than he already was. "The uhm… well, I´d like to clean myself."

Now his confusion changed to slightly arrogant amusement.

"You don´t have those on your planet?"

"I said we do." I half snapped. "Showers. They work with water."

"Well you must have plenty of resources then." Under other circumstances I would probably have appreciated the irony of the hidden political message he had no idea he was implying with his words, but not right now. Anakin´s reply was as crispily passive aggressive as mine but before I could think of something smart he went on talking. "You stand in them, you close the door. You activate it by touching the handle that appears when it´s closed." he said in the not unkind but slightly drawn out, slightly bored voice of someone explaining something very easy to somebody not very intelligent. "It deactivates itself. Only takes a moment. Best not to move."

I opened my mouth to ask about a towel because I hadn´t seen one but reminded myself that apparently no water was needed, gave a nod and a "Thank you." and strode back to my room with as much offworldish dignity as I could. What the hell had this guy been doing? Had he really been sitting there for several hours because he was thinking that I would try to rip everyone´s throats out? The results at the med bay clearly had him on edge, no doubt only confirming what he had sensed, or rather not sensed about me. I wondered whether Obi Wan was feeling the same unease and was just hiding it better. The thought didn´t sit well in my mind, made me a little sad. _Oh stop it_ , an inner voice instantly kicked in. _You might have more urgent things to worry about than this._

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

Let´s just say I prefer showers. There is something very nice about hot water, something that makes you feel clean afterwards and that no buzz and slight prickle on your skin for a few seconds can replace, no matter how much of a time saver the latter is and no matter how much a sonic shower makes you feel like you just had a real one. Beside not knowing what I was eating much of the time, space showers were one of the things I guess I was never really going to get used to.

Afterwards, I got dressed and might have been at a loss of what to do, had it not been for my increasing hunger. This was the extreme example of being a new person at a party and trying not to impose on anyone but I felt awkward about just leaving my quarters and exploring the ship, so the first thing I did was to sit down on my bed and dig through my bag. It looked funnily out of place, that bag from another word. I tipped it upside down.

A purse with money I couldn´t use here. My phone, low on battery and, surprise, surprise, no signal, my small, dark red powerbank, just as useless. A note book bound in vintage looking leather about the size of a folded sheet of paper. I had bought it from the shop somewhen after stealing the silver transmitter from Franklin, probably out of a bad consciousness. It was just a notebook, something to write in, and a pen. I placed it aside and dug deeper, finding two chocolate bars at the bottom of the bag, instantly feeling my stomach react in starving protest. When I was about to unwrap one of them, there was a knock on the door.

So far, there had been no knocks just doors sliding open but that little knock told me, as much as it startled me, that evolving into a multispecied community of space travellers had apparently not wiped out the concept of privacy. "Come in." I called out and for a moment, when I turned, my heart was beating a little faster. It sank again, a moment later. The door slid open to reveal a young jedi displaying a facial expression that still wore a little wariness but who had possibly been told to be polite. I could well imagine by who.

"You must be hungry." Skywalker said, hands behind his back. I could see his eyes dart to the bag on the bed, then back to me. Then he already turned, indicating for me to join him. I did, but pocketed one of the chocolate bars. Just in case.

I caught up with him on the corridor and we walked for a few seconds in rather awkward silence. Then, to my surprise, he spoke. "I did not mean to startle you earlier." he said, sounding a bit like someone who has been told to apologize and is now begrudgingly doing so. "We thought you might be hungry when you woke. Or have questions." I could feel his sidewards glance. I decided that in some way I could even relate to his unease. I had to be something entirely strange to his jedi senses. That didn´t take away that in my world this guarded young man had stories about him that foretold who he would eventually become which made it admittedly difficult for me to trust him in a way I found I had instantly trusted his master. In that moment, however, I decided that it was probably not yet too late to make a neutral start. If anything it would probably be a good thing not to be on the wrong side of the future Lord Vader and that didn´t mean one couldn´t be careful.

"Yes." I said, meaning both those things. Hungry and questions and I decided for one that was in the front of my mind. "Where are we going?"

"We have been following a hyperspace route away from the unknown territories where we picked you up." he said. "We´re headed to the Core."

Vague. Yes, Obi Wan had probably instructed him not to be an ass, but he was keeping information on a short leash I could tell. "The Core…" What he meant dawned on me.

"…of the galaxy." he said, unable to keep a tone from his voice that indicated that where he came from the continuation of this sentence was very common knowledge.

I felt myself slow down but kept walking. He noticed and stopped, waiting. A mental picture of the Milky Way popped up in my mind, trying to comprehend what he had just said. It seemed a logical enough thing but I found that if contronted by it, there was a limit of what amount of distance an Earthling brain can comprehend.

"So that is…"

"About ten thousand par secs or more." he replied like it was nothing. I felt dizzy.

"Your people have not developed space travel yet?" Another of his attempts at politeness that I beleived to have a slightly ridiculing undertone. Maybe I was imagining it.

"We have," I said. "we just…we´ve been to the moon." The late JFK would no doubt have been proud for how much of a solid technological achievement I sold this.

"Which one?" Anakin´s eyebrows rose.

"Ours."

"The one in your orbit?" Now he did sound incredulous.

"Well, everybody has to start somewhere." I snapped.

I half hoped he´d snap back. Probably because everything that was happening around me was still too much and yelling at someone would have been at least a little bit of an outlet. But he didn´t do me that favour, instead just countered with a "Must be quite the ride for you then." and before I could react to that, he made a sharp turn to the left and I found myself in a cantina. Not _that_ kind of cantina, not the scum and villainy kind with a band, but it was not much less bewildering. At least for me.

The room was not full which I guessed meant that I had slept longer than the average person on board. There were several dozen tables which once more reminded me of how huge this ship was. This was probably not even the only cantina. Groups of two, three or four were sat at some of the tables, some still eating, others in light conversation. A large chunk of the people were humans, but I saw plenty of others as well, humanoid, but I realised that my ability to name alien species was very limited. I could make out what I believed to be a male Twi-lek conversing with two humans a few tables to my left, but apart from that? I nearly bumped into someone whose gilled head and large eyes instantly placed him…. I guess him … in the same species as admiral Ackbar, and the server behind the row of counters full of mostly unidentifyable foods looked…well I had no idea what they called the little green ones again.

There is something I got used to very quickly, actually right in that moment: fruit is always a good thing to eat. If you see a human eat it it´s safe. Same goes for stuff that looks like bread usually. Can´t go too wrong with grain no matter what world it´s grown on. Other things I could not even begin to identify and Skywalker seemed to be taking some glee in giving them names that meant nothing – a humour I might have appreciated if it hadn´t been a little much. Instead of going for the blue milk I decided for water. And turned into a spontanious vegan. At least for now. I balanced my tablet with an assortment of colourful fruit and bread to an empty table and sit down, my stomach totally not fine with my initially careful approach at testing the unknown fruits. Anakin merely helped himself to something that I cold not idenitify. Maybe to gross me out.

"Where is Obi Wan?" I asked after a moment and when the hunger had stopped being of the ravaging kind.

"Master Kenobi is on the bridge." Anakin said, not sounding malevolent but making me wonder if he used the more formal title to remind me of the proverbial food chain on this ship.

"We´ll be there soon," he continued. "We´ll leave hyperspace in a short time so…you should eat up and prepare for landing." I didn´t really know how one prepares for landing, unless the vehicle is a commercial airplane and I meant to say so, but then, for just a moment, I allowed my guards to be down a bit, because yes I felt on guard around this guy but I had also been thrust down the proverbial rabbit hole into a world of wonder and in that moment with my belly satisfied and after a good few hours of sleep and before my mind caught up and might start to panic, I wanted to experience some of that wonder. "I´ve never landed on another planet before." I said. "any chance there´s a good spot to watch it?"

 **oOoOoOoOoOoOo**

 **Author´s note: I apologize for the delay in updating this. The last couple of weeks have just been extremely busy. Anyhow, I hope you guys still enjoy it. Not too much plot development in this chapter, but I felt that she will need a bit of time to settle in and take in the world around her and all the little things that might be new and different.**

 **TitanXyz: Thank you very much I appreciate that. And…possibly. ;) Seeing how she reacts to these two…**

 **Guest: Well, fair enough. I wrote right at the beginning that not everyone likes this kind of a story and while this is not a self insert I can understnad why it´s not everyone´s cup of tea (even though you posted this after reading three chapters into it, but that doesnt matter). Maybe you´ll like one of my other Star Wars stories better.**


	8. Planetfall

**Author´s note: It has taken me way too long to update this story and I apologize. Updates will be more frequent now with my muses back and my work schedules more relaxed. I am glad about everyone who reads and enjoys, this story is written entirely for fun and not to be taken too seriously.**

 **Chapter 8**

 **Planetfall**

I had asked for a view and a view I got.

The bridge of the _Vigilance_ offered a wide panorama into outer space still zipping by in the by now slightly less bewildering greyish blue haze of hyperspace that still got me dizzy. When Skywalker and I entered from the lower end, ascending some steps to the upper levels there was a small group of people there, some working the controls and a few more standing together talking. The bridge was a massive areal. From the size of the command tower as it had presented itself on the outside I might have assumed right away that this would be bigger than your average 747 cockpit, but you know, first time space travelling can be a bit too distracting to notice trivial details like that.

By the looks of it Obi-Wan was in deep conversation with a dark haired human male a few years his senior – the pilot as I´d eventually learn. At that point I knew so little – I for example was not aware that this ship had been on a diplomatic mission of the rather routine sort when the Jedi had picked up pursuit of the two alleged bountyhunters that had been on my unsuspecting tail while master and padawan were actually in the middle of some negotiations to avoid yet one more world to fall to the alarmingly growing number of separatist worlds that were breaking their allegiance to the Republic. After picking up his unexpected cargo in the form of a befuddled, travel sick human female the Jedi master had urged the _Vigilance_ to return to Coruscant immediately – Anakin was not very good at or very willing to hide his suspicion towards me but finding a detached-from-midiclorians out of luck and out of money 20sth poli-sci-student gone bookseller in the deep unknown territories of the galaxy was a reason to worry. He was too kind and polite to let me know, but Obi-Wan as well was concerned about the recent discovery that contrary to former belief, midichlorians were apparently far less essential to life than they had all thought. It was like finding out there were areas in space where natural laws didn´t apply – quite literally. It was either accepting that their concept of biology had a major, so far undiscovered flaw… or assuming I or my entire planet was the result of some weird Dark Side science project. And finding bounty hunters up in it all was worrying … bounty hunters always sold to the highest bidder after all.

As we walked closer, Obi-Wan looked up, his eyes meeting mine in a neutrally friendly expression of recognition. "Did you sleep well?" he asked. I gave him a short nod, feeling a little akward answering to that question for some reason while everyone around me here was busy with far more important matters than sleeping in, either military personell, Jedi or a colourful assortment of species (not a typical occurence on the _Negotiator_ as I would eventually find out, but this mission had been of the diplomatic sort so there were a mix of people along for it, not just clone troopers. "I did, thank you." I said, a little belatedly, thinking that just the nod would be rude and not entirely sure whether the thank you refered to his thoughtful inquiry or the fact that he had stayed with me until I had fallen asleep like a child scared of the monster in the closet.

His face lit up a little in a faint but effective smile and for a moment that took a few years off him, making him look almost boyish. What effect would things that had not yet happened have on that smile I wondered. Would he eventually just start to smile less when life started to fling things at him that he didn´t deserve nor could help from happening? It was like a brief flash of foreboding almost giving me chills and I was very glad in that very moment that with my ridiculously freakish midiclorian counts I was apparently pretty much a blank sheet to his Jedi senses. And indeed, he didn´t seem to notice my brief trip forward up memory lane and turned his attention to the big window front, resting his hands on the reiling, leaning forward a bit. A small side glance and I understood and stepped next to him. Anakin stayed. "There are hyperspace routes throughout the known galaxy." he asplained. "Some areas have a better…infrastructure than others and distance becomes relative that way. There are some reaches in the Outer Rim from which you can reach the Core far quicker than say from some mid rim worlds not connected to the larger net of routes that were often blazed through space along trading posts and such. Knowledge of such routes has always been crucial and these days finding out new or lost ones, like so many things, adds or takes from the influence a certain party or group has in the conflicted times that we see arise." He paused for a moment, possibly misreading my silence. "I do not mean to confuse you," he said. "I just mean to explain."

"Explain what?" I asked.

He gave me a small smile, almost a smirk, a bit if mischief lurking behind his eyes. "Speed." he said.

"otherwise you might wonder why we have already arrived in the Core."

And like the most perfect of timings which just had to please someone with a penchant for witty, snarky humour, like himself, that moment was the very moment when we left hyperspace and I was treated to the sudden change of scenery I had asked to witness…and was not prepared for at all. Because just like that the blur ceased and just like that, Coruscant, the centre of the galaxy, seat of the Galactic Senate and the Jedi Council, leaped into my field of vision, the exit of the hyperspace route bringing us to what was a safe distance to the planet, but which seemed just bafflingly close to me.

I felt my mouth drop open, felt how my fingers unclenched from the reiling which I had held on to in an unconscious imitation of Obi-Wan´s body language and suddenly I was walking down the few steps to the lower level of the bridge, getting as close to the front window as I could until I was standing there, almost on my toe tips, pressing a hand to the glass. It´s one thing to encounter your favourite Jedi master on an unexpectedly eventful drive home, to be swept through the galaxy, to be told that said galaxy was teeming with life, that it was true, the Jedi, the Dark Side, all of it…. But in that moment I found out that being confronted with the actual look at an inhabited planet other than Earth was what rammed the truth home for real. The city planet´s glittering patterns of roads and city districts seemed like an almost steam-punky sight, all copper and golden threads like gossamer giving it a unique sort of sheen bereft of natural beauty, and every sparkling little light seemed to wink one message at me: _Told you so, girl. You´re not alone, do you believe it now?_

OoOoOoOoOoO

Despite its size which was way beyond that of any vehicle I had ever encountered in what suddenly seemed a pretty unspectacular life, the space port we approached was big enough for the star destroyer to make planetfall. Planetfall. A fancy word that I noticed had more to do with a navy sort of setting than air traffic and for some reason that reminded me of a book by Cixin Liu I had read recently where it was claimed that the space fleet of the future would be modelled after the navy, not the airforce. Random thoughts like that, I guessed, did their fair share for making me keep my sanity. _Oh, look, big enough for us to land._ And: _well isn´t it interesting they call it planetfall?_ Those thoughts, random as they may seem certainly beat the repetitive even though fading endless loop of _you are definitely just out there freezing in a ditch, so whyever did you make that detour?_

Truth be told, probably my mind had accepted by that point that all this was real, because no dream had ever felt that realistic.

What I guessed had to be about two hours later we had made it off the ship, taken a shuttle from one of the larger hovering platforms and made it down to what I instinctively began to call ´Downtown Coruscant´ - not because it seemed like much of a downtown area, but because it was the only place that I thought to be able to place, the only location with some recognisable pattern to it, but never ceasing to make me gape in amazement as we travelled what must be the Coruscant equivalent of the late afternoon rushhour into the very centre of power. The buildings were unmistakable, two of them standing out vastly even against the mesmerising landscape of buildings and the never ceasing stream of airborne speeders: The flat, stadium - like structure of the senate building was actually not that immediate to spot and I almost missed it, but the massive square structure of the Jedi Temple was visible from afar, its five-spiked towers standing out clearly in the fading daylight.

In that moment, the whole place, all of Coruscant from start to finish felt like one huge chunk of stimulus satuation. Only in the days that followed would I explore them bit by bit, understanding more and more of this new world and at the same time as I discovered similarities, discovered other things that were to be expected but didn´t add to me feeling comfortable.

I had been entirely silent for the flight, ever since leaving the _Vigilance_ and Obi-Wan must have understood the reason for it just me being awestruck and, frankly, intimidated by the vastness there was to be taken in, because he did not disturb my train of thoughts and at that point I was beyond caring whether or not Anakin was still shooting his occasional looks at me as if to reassure me that his guardedness towards me had not let up. In the end, however, it was me who almost spoke up the moment I realised that the speeder was indeed headed for the temple and I might have made myself even more suspicious by stating something of the like but Obi-Wan unknowingly saved me by speaking before I could, my mouth already open.

"We are going to find you living quarters for the time being." he said calmly. "As I said, we need to find out more about all of this and I will have to consult with some others on this matter." He ommitted details as he had before, not saying words like _other Jedi_ or _Jedi Council_ , but I filled in the blanks for myself.

"The Jedi order´s headquarters hold a number of facilities, one of them being a small guest wing, usually used for off planet visitors that have a connection to the Order of for diplomats from other systems." He pointed ahead towards the massive building that was coming closer.

"Headquarters as in temple?" There was that strange desire in me to now and then ask for specifics I already believed to know, like little reality checks, to find out whether this world was really what I believed I knew of it. Obi-Wan smiled politely.

"The temple, yes." he said. "I am unfamiliar with the cultural implications of your world or the spiritual concepts connected to the world ´temple´ on your planet so I picked a more neutral term instead to avoid confusion." _Always so thoughtful._

"Temple usually refers to the houses of worship of some of our religions." I said, curious whether he saw parallels.

"Well, it is more a place of knowledge and learning," Obi-Wan said. "Spiritually and physically. It is difficult to explain to an outsider."

I glanced at Anakin as his master said that and what I read on his face was the young man´s suspicion all over again. "And maybe it is not a good thing for an outsider to know the secrets of the Order…" he interjected, not in a too forward manner, but the faint reproach was there and in that moment the padawan braid that was standing out starkly from his head of unruly hair that had already begun to grow out was a reminder of his status and at the same time made his defiance all the more obvious.

"Not secrets," Obi-Wan said, not even sparing Anakin a glance. "These are things that are known throughout the galaxy, Anakin, so I am just making the transition a little easier for a traveller. After all, we all have our place in the universe and need to start working with the hand we were dealt." His voice perked up slightly towards the end of it almost in a joking quip and I understood that he was clearly making some fun of his apprentice. At first it almost confused me that Obi-Wan would respond to an obvious reproach by his padawan in such a good mannered way instead of telling him to cut the crap, but then I wondered whether it was merely the absense of other jedi that made their relationship more relaxed. Or whehter Obi-Wan was just as tired as I still kind of felt and so glad to be home that not even a sassy padawan could ruin his mood. No matter what it was, it seemed to take away all motivation from Anakin to continue the debate.

oOoOoOoOo

To try and describe the Jedi Temple in its entirety all on a first impression would be impossible. A building that large, that towering, encompassing what would later turn out to me to be pretty much a world on its own, sustainable almost entirely on its own with outside support (or so it had been once), was just too massive to put into words on a whim. A few first impressions however, set themselves into my thoughts, making me think about them half the night while I would later lay awake in my room in what I fancily called to myself the ´diplomats wing´, trying to sift through all the incredible stuff my five overwhelmed senses had been exposed to again on this second day worlds away from home:

One: Yes, it really is impressive. Huge halls, columns and all, light sifting through high windows and making things look pretty damn nice especially in the evening light

Two: Maybe not as tranquil as one might think. The odd wandering Jedi master, robe swishing, deep in thought might be a bit more of a Hollywood version of such a spiritual place. What was more common I would soon learn was empty corridors or people talking in small groups, but not keeping it extra hushed. There were rooms for that, for meditation and such. The Jedi had become more secular not just in the way they got themselves involved into politics much more than earlier grandmasters would have liked to ever see, but also in the way they would appear to the public. Also, most didn´t seem offended by the occasional loud group of youngsters or people talking above whisper level, maybe to make up for the fact that this entire building seemed to have a lot of empty spaces and they were trying to forget about that, to make up to the vastness by just being a little more present. Had there been more Jedi once? Had the Order simply spread through the galaxy more so there were more than enough temples? I had no idea.

Three: Casual scenes of daily life were far more frequent, it turned out, than said meditating wise old and young bearded masters. Older padawans bustling about In a rush to not draw the annoyance of their masters or another master they were supposed to see for a lesson, cleaning robots (even though those always seemed to be busy dusting things, huge place, after all), all these kinds of little things

Four: The feeling of ancient stones and of just a whiff of neglect already presented itself outside. Not the smooth CGI generated stones I knew from the big screen but, while still impressive, still incredible, something more…gritty. A little worn down, something that might look even more splendid with just a tad of a paintjob, or a stone replaced here and there.

I didn´t mind any of these little signs of a place lived in and used for what must have been millennia for all I knew. If anything, it only reassured me further that all of this was real, that my brain could hardly come up with all the little details on its own, no way it could make things so… realistic.

"What now?"

Obi-Wan, I am sure, would have offered to carry a bag if I had any, any that was bigger than just my small rucksack that is. Like this, he stood a little awkward, hands tucked into the opposite ends of his sleeves as he stood about a metre away from the door frame of my new accommodation. A room a good stretch into a quiet corridor, away from the buzz that he probably thought would give me some needed solitude but that already felt a little lonely. Part of me wanted to be in the middle of it. Give me a room right in the middle of it all already, but there were things even in this world that didn´t work that way. I was not a Jedi after all, I was just some guest, and a weird, low-midichlorian freak at that.

"Now you should rest." he told me. _Oh, again? How about exploring? How about maybe hitting downtown Coruscant for a bit of a night out?_ I ignored the fact that I was still a little dizzy. He seemed to catch it in my gaze however, because at that point I had decided he probably couldn´t sense my feelings the way he might be able to sense others´ (well, that´´s how jedi stuff worked in my mind, anyways). He added: "You have seen a lot and your mind has to work through it. We need to see what happens now, how we can help you."

"And how will that be?"

"I already talked to the grandmaster of the Order. The Council wants to see you tomorrow morning." _Oh fuck ME!_ My startled glance prompted him to quickly add: "Oh there is nothing you need to fear. I will be right there as well."

"I´m…I´m not scared."

He nodded, not commenting, then reached for something in the pocket of his robes, holding out a small device to me. Roundish, outlandish, and yet, I had an idea what it might be.

"If anything is the matter, you can contact me with this" he said. "It´s a communicator."

I took it, regarded it. Couldn´´t help but look up again and say, mildly joking. "So if I want to leave the room?"

"Well, you are not grounded." he replied with a spark of humour. "but I would suggest not to stray too far. You might get lost."

 _Seeing how I tried the last time I tried to get home yes, you might assume that_ I thought to myself.

"If that happens I can contact you though, right?"

Not sure if it was a step too far, my tone a tad too familiar, but he just gave me a half earnest, half bemused look as if humouring me for maybe showing some symptoms of space crazy of a so far isolated specimen. "Good night, Emily." he said and with a little bow, left.

I closed the door behind me, telling myself that I needed to be careful, unable to determine exactly about what and why, or maybe I was just a little scared to wonder.


End file.
